Packaged Products

Most genetically modified food on the market doesn't come from the produce section, but from processed foods containing corn, soy and wheat. But the possibility of adding nutrients like calcium or omega-3 fatty acids, or making plants like wheat or peanuts hypoallergenic, provides consumers with more of an incentive to welcome GMOs into their lives. The new wave of GMOs also comes with promises from companies like Monsanto that they're safer and more thoroughly tested than their predecessors.

Monsanto has been targeted in a potential class-action lawsuit over the damage one of its plants did to a West Virginia town between 1949 and 2004. The company is accused of releasing the cancer-causing chemical dioxin into the atmosphere at levels that exceed EPA standards by a factor of more than 500.

The Pentagon appears to have been overpaying (by hundreds of millions of dollars,) for the food it serves to U.S. forces overseas. The leading characters in this story are Sara Lee, Perdue Chicken, ConAgra, a multi-billion dollar Kuwaiti firm called Public Warehousing, and a handful of shady figures who seem to spend their careers alternating between the military and food suppliers.

American Spirit cigarettes are made of organic and natural tobacco. But there's nothing healthy about smoking. And the cigarettes aren't made by Native Americans. They are made by R.J. Reynolds, the world’s second largest tobacco company.

If you enjoy chocolate on occasion or are a hopeless addict, you don’t have to be part of 21st century slave labor. There is way to alter your consciousness with chocolate without bugging your conscience. Inspired by the free trade philosophy and practice that has fairly successfully reshaped the economics of other third world export crops such as coffee, a good number of small chocolate purveyors offer fantastic chocolate without the stain of child labor.